


Grantaire's Tattoos

by standalone



Series: Tattoos AU [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Race Changes, M/M, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/M, less fucking, more loving, never not declaring love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 12:49:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14355867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/pseuds/standalone
Summary: He has given himself to them a million times, in so many ways, but never so publicly. Never in a way he can’t, in frantic needy self-delusion, unsee.This gift is the biggest thing he has the power to give.





	Grantaire's Tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> I decided this needs to go live today; thus it has been rather hastily completed and hurled into internet space. Please feel free to lmk about major errors or omissions. 
> 
> Thanks to the usual excellent people, and also to the commenter who asked a question that stuck in my mind and made me think _hell, it's been a while; maybe I ought to revisit these characters_.

> **The Artist, Made and Unmade**
> 
> **by Michael Geoffrey, _Artrage Magazine_**
> 
> Despite the nondescript outfit and a beanie that hides his famously unruly hair, the artist gets made no fewer than three times before we've even managed to order our drinks. The fans aren’t pushy—one asks for an autograph, while the others are content to shake his hand and bend his ear—but neither are they shy about demanding a stranger’s time.
> 
> We claim a corner table and I ask Grantaire if this level of attention is out of the ordinary.
> 
> "They know me here," he says with a characteristically dismissive shrug.
> 
> In classic Grantaire fashion, he leaves it at that.
> 
> “Word got out that this was his spot,” the proprietor, Musichetta Vittorio, tells me later while she settles a customer’s tab. “Ironically, the more the fans come looking for him, the less he’s here.” Of the bar’s now-famous Grantaire-scrawled bathroom drawings, Vittorio says, “I offered to paint ’em over, kill off the crowds a little, but [Grantaire] was like, ‘it’s good for your business,’ which, well—” Gesturing to the bustling bar area, her point is clear: It is. “But I miss seeing that fucker around like I used to.”
> 
> As anyone reading this almost certainly knows, Grantaire burst onto the world’s art scene in 2016 with an incendiary solo show at Montréal’s Galerie Bienvenu, and has since attained rapid prominence with exhibitions at the Grotto Gallery in London and Père et Fils in Paris. His political posters, iconic overnight, have become ubiquitous at rallies, on t-shirts, and in the apartment windows of every left-leaning metropolis. With his first hometown show opening this weekend at Patria, he’s the pride of this city—but to see him before you, contemplatively slouching over a pint of beer, you wouldn’t guess it.
> 
> Grantaire looks surprised when I inquire about his subdued demeanor. “Cause you thought I’d be a brash dickbag?” he laughs. “Guess what? I totally am. But you know, it’s hard to buy into this being-interviewed-by-art-mags thing. I could be a flash in the pan. I mean, I hope not. Better not to get carried away, though.”
> 
> “Carried Away” might as well have been the name of Grantaire’s first major show. (Actually, it was quite aptly called “Root Regrets,” a name for which Bienvenu’s slick gallery-runner Georges Montparnasse continues to claim bucketloads of credit.) The frayed commotion of its compositions forced the viewer’s attention to scatter, the voice of the art unquiet and unquestionably torn between rejection and pursuit.
> 
> Previews of the upcoming show hint at moodier, less saturated imagery than Grantaire has shown in his previous collections. Where his earlier forms contrast sharply with their stark backgrounds, the people in these works seem to almost sink into the canvas. 
> 
> I ask about this shift.
> 
> After a minute’s parody of typical artiste bullshitting, Grantaire offers a startlingly earnest interpretation: “It’s about comfort. I used to paint to get away. You can see it, I think.” He points at my tablet, which is at the moment displaying an image of “The Friends,” one of his best-known paintings. “They’re ready to fucking turn tail and run. I guess people like that. I mean, there’s energy in it? I haven’t felt like running lately.”
> 
> I ask why not, and Grantaire shakes his head at me over our empty glasses. The bewilderment is real.
> 
> “I think I must be happy.”
> 
> No one who has met Grantaire could describe him as comfortable in the life he leads—but it might not be wrong to say he’s grown comfortable with the discomfort. He’s forthcoming about his alcohol consumption (excessive), sleep schedule (irregular), and self-image (uneven, but unrelentingly negative), but his demeanor is relaxed, and, despite an illness that put his work on hold last October and November, it’s easy to believe him when he says he’s taking better care of himself. 
> 
> Rumor has it that the man, no stranger to the tattoo needle, was spotted leaving Inkflower recently, but the arm artistry on display at our interview seems to have weathered at least a few seasons.
> 
> “That was _yesterday_!” he says, shaking his scruffy head in apparent disbelief at the willingness of his fellow citizens to rat him out. “You’ve got spies everywhere.”
> 
> I mention that Inkflower owner and tattoo artist Floréal refused to acknowledge whether she’d even ever heard of him, let alone tattooed him.
> 
> “My friend _told_ me she was the best,” Grantaire says, nodding approvingly, then shrugs at his arms, tattooed to the wrist, as if it's a confession. “Nah, nothing new. Not yet. I mean. I might have something in the works soon. We’ll see.”
> 
> When another round arrives, I work up the courage to ask the big question, the one that every single colleague and art student told me to ask: Who the hell are you dating right now?
> 
> “Who wants to know?” Grantaire asks back, grinning.
> 
> Rarely seen in public alone, Grantaire has earned a reputation as something of a playboy; the fan websites run rampant with speculation, creating entire backstories based on a single candid photo of Grantaire hand-in-hand with The Woman in the Green Jacket, or sharing a drink with The Blond Activist or, of course, being wined and dined by notorious libertine Montparnasse. 
> 
> Grantaire’s months-long disappearance from public view late last year did nothing to quell rumors about his mysterious love life.
> 
> Even when he returned, noticeably drawn from what he insists was a lengthy bout of illness (not rehab, as many speculated; at the suggestion, Grantaire snorted into his beer) it was on the arm of a jaw-droppingly statuesque man he referred to as “my doctor,” much to the prurient delight of his fans. 
> 
> “Like I said,” he says after a long minute, “I’m happy.”
> 
> Pressed to expand on whether he’s seeing someone in particular, he only says, with a cagey smile, “You know. I see people.”
> 
> “Are any of them _special_ people?” I push onward.
> 
> “Sure,” he says, and his eyes go momentarily distant, like he’s gazing into a world beyond the sight of normal man. “Yeah. Special people. I’ve always been pretty shitty at dating, though, so man, I’m not trying to say too much. Not trying to fuck this up.”
> 
> His exes tell stories. Most are run-of-the-mill artist stuff: drunken nights, hung-over mornings, brilliance mingled with biting self-criticism. Some of them tell me he’s an asshole. Many add that they’ll always love him anyway. Quite a few show off tattoos they got in his presence. A high-school girlfriend who asked not to be named shows me a cluster of densely-petaled roses on her side. 
> 
> “They’re a cover-up,” she says. “Used to be a star. He got one too. We matched. But you know, you outgrow your youthful decisions.” Chuckling, she adds, “I hear _he_ outgrew _women_.”
> 
> “How’s it go?” Grantaire muses, when I point out that the spotty thread of documentation suggests a diverse history of lovers, and ask if he assigns himself any labels. “What’s the line? ‘[Am I stray, or am I great](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vikram_Seth)?’?”
> 
> The quotation, which seems to be a paraphrase of the writer Vikram Seth, may be inaccurate, but the concept fits. Great and stray: Grantaire is both.

—

There’s a moment in the interview when he blanks out—just for a second; he’s trying to run through this media gantlet like a hamster on a greased wheel, scrabbling for purchase wherever he can find it, holding on, getting through, although maybe there’s no _through_ about it. Maybe this is just his life now? But if it is, he’s down. Being wined and dined—okay, beered—by art-world bigwigs is really a pretty good time.

So he tries to stay focused. But the guy asks him about who he’s seeing, if they’re _special_ , and instead of making some dumb joke about today’s special, flavor of the day, he flashes back, hard and immersive, to when he got home from Mexico City last week:

“Listen,” Combeferre said from the kitchen the moment he walked in. “We have to talk.”

“Is this an intervention?” Grantaire flipped back.

“Seriously,” Enjolras added. “A serious talk.”

“Seriously,” Grantaire said back. “ _Is_ it?”

“It’s not an intervention,” ’Ferre said at the same time as Enjolras said, “You need to fucking stop asking that,” and grabbed R for a kiss, yanking his beanie off in the process. “Unless you’re actually trying to get us to throw you an intervention.”

“It’s about marriage,” Combeferre broke in, because Enjolras was kissing R a lot, and ’Ferre’s shift was going to start in like an hour. “We need to talk about getting married.”

He’d known this was coming. He’d known. How could he not know? Enj and ’Ferre had been together a couple years now, but more than that, they’d been best friends since forever. And both of them, whatever objections Enjolras might hurl at anyone foolish enough to make the assertion, were the marrying type. It was inevitable. Grantaire had steeled himself for this moment, watching them together across rooms, seeing them curl around each other in their sleep. He had prepared himself.

It wouldn’t have to change anything. Nothing big, anyway. It would just solidify what they already all knew to be true: that while his relationships with each of them—and with both of them—blew every other relationship he’d ever had clear out of the water, still, the fundament of this whole plural love was those two, Enjolras and Combeferre, together forever, meant to be.

Grantaire pulled back from Enjolras, who was still holding onto him, and let himself slop backward onto a stool. But that wouldn’t do, he thought, as his ass hit down. A moment like this called for celebration.

By force of will, he made his legs stand him back up, and held his hand out to Combeferre, who gamely shook it, though with an odd sort of face, and then to Enjolras. “Congratulations,” he said, waiting for Enjolras to take his hand. But Enjolras just looked at him blankly. “Really,” Grantaire tried to insist. “That’s great.”

At that, apparently something dawned on Enjolras, because he groaned, “Oh, fucking hell, ’Ferre, we did it wrong,” and shoved Grantaire back down into his seat.

“Grantaire,” Combeferre said, leaning his forearms solidly onto the kitchen counter and gazing steadily into R’s eyes, “we want you to marry me.”

For this, Grantaire had not prepared. He was, in fact, so unprepared for this that it floored him, stunned him, took him back to a sense memory of immobility under ’Ferre’s gaze that first night they got together, when ’Ferre followed him into the bathroom, stripped to the waist, and melted Grantaire’s entire fucking brain.

He managed to swing his eyes toward Enjolras, but Enjolras was now leaning forward too, long arms like flamingo’s legs propping him up over the counter next to ’Ferre, and his whole face was like a fire that someone’s tried to smother by throwing a blanket over it, seconds from reigniting.

Something was expected of him, some sort of logical, rational answer—except that there had been no question asked, had there? which meant that, for the moment, he was off the hook.

Fortunately, whatever the hell his face was doing as he meandered the rhetorical reticulations of this mental path led Combeferre in a different direction. “Are you okay?” ’Ferre asked, and it is so interesting how his voice can be at once soft and compassionate while also giving you the sense that he might lock you in a cage if you don’t shape the fuck up. “You’ve been sleeping, right?”

“I’m fine. You guys.” He rolled his eyes at Enjolras, who was fussing off to pour him a glass of water. “Can I get a beer?”

Enjolras gave him both.

“You need to stop worrying about me.”

“You were in the hospital for almost a month.”

“Like a week and a half.”

“What you owe for that must be—”

“Taken care of,” Grantaire said. “I’m a very successful artist with patrons lining up to line my coffers. Obviously, I am extremely capable of managing the costs of—”

“You haven’t paid it off,” Enjolras said, and even though it was just conjecture—he couldn’t _know_ —he was right.

“I have really good insurance,” ’Ferre said, for no reason. Ah. No. Because of the thing he’d said earlier. The thing to which R must have known they must soon return. “I would like for you to be similarly insured.”

“So this is it?” Grantaire asked, toasting with his beer. A beer at home is the best beer. A beer at home with an argument on the side is unbeatable. “One little wasting disease and we’re ready to buy into not only the fucked-up heteronormative system of exclusive two-person marriage but also, in one fell swoop, the social warfare of work-based medical insurance?”

“We were so fucking worried,” Enjolras said, but it was already a borderline yell. “How can you possibly think anything the fuck else? I made ’Ferre give me drugs so I wouldn’t lose my shit.”

“So you _can_ do that!” Grantaire accused ’Ferre.

“No, but it didn’t stop him asking.”

“Shut. Up.” Enjolras said, to Grantaire it sounded like, but maybe both. “We love you, you shit. _I_ love you.”

“I love you,” Combeferre agreed, nodding. 

“And you’re worried that tender baby-bird Grantaire’s gonna die,” Grantaire said, in full snark, “because of his devil-may-care lack of medical coverage and/or a real job.”

“Exactly!” Enjolras was losing color in his face—a consistently reliable indicator of the ferocity of his feelings.

“Really?” This, he did not expect. But they _both_ looked like they meant it. ’Ferre looks like he means everything he says; sure; that goes with the job—or maybe the job goes with a person who by nature looks like they’re always about to tell you this might hurt a little; but also, the way one of his hands is now twitching as it holds Enjolras back is the same way you hold back your pugilistic friend when really both of you are itching to fight. “Come on, ’Ferre, you’re a _doctor_ ,” he argued. “I was nowhere near death’s door. I don’t even have the address.”

He really wasn’t. He was deeply uncomfortable and unhappy about the whole bedridden Victorian illness situation, but he was always gonna be fine. 

And of course ’Ferre knew that. And he’s the calmest dude Grantaire knows, so he had to have told Enjolras a thousand times that there was no real danger of them losing their lesser third. So this shit was just pure irrationality, which meant... 

“Seriously,” Enjolras said to him, “You marry Combeferre for his fancy insurance or I swear to goddamn _god_ , Grantaire, I’ll...”

“Fine.”

It meant he was going to do it.

“—I’ll...”

“Fine,” he said again, and Enjolras, who was working himself up to an extraordinary paleness of fury, lit up from within. “I’ll marry you, Combeferre. I will put your delicate hearts at ease, that you may unburden yourself of any concern on my account except the fucking unyielding torrent of concerns you’re gonna have to deal with if you’re fucking married to me.” He scrutinized Combeferre. “You ready for this?”

“I am,” ’Ferre said, kissing him once, on the forehead, before leaving for work. 

Enjolras was still glowing. 

“This is the best decision. Just wait. You’re going to be so glad.”

“So what you’re saying is, I was right it was an intervention.”

“If we go with that, will you keep saying yes?”

“Isn’t once enough?”

—

The reporter sends him an advance copy of the story, which will come out on Friday, with a note that he can email back asap if anything needs to be cut.

Nah, Grantaire decides. Everything in there is true enough. Sometimes the permanence of the printed word might be the goad he needs.

So, the evening before the magazine come outs—when, he can not doubt, ’Ferre and Enj will instantly buy out the whole damned newsrack—he tells them to meet him at his shitty old studio after they both get off work.

“I have an engagement gift for you,” he says, because if he starts to beat around the bush, he’ll beat the whole thing into the ground. “Because, can we make this absolutely unfuckupably clear? I am marrying both of you, no matter what the stupid certificate says.”

He pulls his hands away from the two and flattens them on the sticky, paint-spattered table before him. “Ferre,” he says, spreading the fingers of his right hand over the furrowed wood, “this one’s for you. And Enj.” He nods toward the left.

The men all look at the hands, where clear skin emerges from the inky clutter of the forearms, and rolls, smooth and open, to the fingertips. 

“I’ve been saving them,” he says. "I didn’t want to have to look at bullshit all the time. Now? They’re yours. You tell me what you want.”

They used to be meatier: it's like the illness started by gnawing away the excess flesh of the extremities, leaving behind hands that, it’s true, now feel a little foreign in their sinewy lack of softness. Even if they were his own old hands, though, that used to dimple where they bent, he would be ready. 

“This is a huge decision,” Enjolras sputters, reaching for one of R’s hands like it’s justice. “I. I'm. _Honored_. But I'm going to need some time.”

“Enjolras, when have you ever needed time?” asks 'Ferre, whose eyes have taken on a certain appraising quality that makes Grantaire shudder in pleasure, knowing that he is the thing being appraised. 

“It's his body. I can’t go off half-cocked.”

Grantaire restrains himself from making the obvious joke. 

“I’m not kidding,” he says instead. “You get my hands in marriage, and you don’t tell me by tomorrow, I’m getting fast-food logos on both of them, and then you’ll hate me forever, and it’s gonna be all your fault. I have an appointment with Floréal in the morning, and before that, you each tell me what goes on yours.”

He has given himself to them a million times, in so many ways, but never so publicly. Never in a way he can’t, in frantic needy self-delusion, unsee. Similarly, he’s kept the tattoos off his hands on purpose; he hasn’t wanted the distraction of ink there. When he’s drawing or painting or even just dicking around on the computer, his hands could be anyone’s. They’re connected to the creation brain, which is not so much _his_ brain as it is a universal channel to which he is able, sometimes, to tune these persuadable appendages. 

This gift is the biggest thing he has the power to give.

*

At breakfast the next morning, a yawning ’Ferre tells him to get a single line across the back of his hand: the horizon. “You’re where we’re going and where we meet,” he says, drawing his pointer finger across the skin from the lowest joint of the pinkie to the jutting bump of the thumb. “We come together in you.”

“Gross, dude,” Grantaire guffaws, and it takes ’Ferre a second longer to get it than Enjolras, who punches Grantaire in the shoulder. “But, I mean, _true_.” 

Enjolras punches him again.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Combeferre says, chuckling, “but I like it no less for the connotation. What did you choose, Enj?”

Enjolras looks a little bright, a little defiant, as he digs in his pocket for a scrap of paper, which he attempts to smooth out on the table. In his impatient handwriting, it just says, a whole bunch of times, the word _this_. This. THIS. this. 

Combeferre tilts his head quizzically. “What—?”

“You said you wanted it,” Enjolras says. “Early on. The first time it was just us.” He’s talking fast, hard, how he does when he’s unsure or embarrassed. Grantaire feels his face go slack—a reaction he hasn’t yet managed to unteach himself when Enjolras gets impassioned. “You said we wanted—me and ’Ferre wanted—revolution, but that you wanted _this_. Us. I don’t know what to call us, the three of us, not really, and especially not once there’s legal documentation mixed in, but I want it too. Maybe I was the first one to know it. I’ve never known what to call it, you and me and ’Ferre, but I’ve wanted it, and now we have it, and ever since you said it, II realized, in my head I’ve just called this thing we have _this_.”

Grantaire closes his eyes, overcome. “What the fuck was I even thinking. You fuckers.”

“You want us to push you to the precipice,” says Enjolras, who always gets it.

“It’s easier for you to part with flesh than feelings,” Combeferre adds on. “But you make these parts of yourself vulnerable to us because—”

“‘Cause we’re the loves of your fucking life,” Enjolras says.

“You are,” Grantaire groans, burying his face in his hands, because to say this at all is impossible, and to look at them at the same time would certainly break every one of the millions of spells that make this beautiful reality real. “This is.”

— 

They marry a week later, before a county clerk, with Enjolras as their witness. All wear suits. Grantaire got them boutonnieres from Jehan that morning without exactly explaining what for; and he is still quite unclear how much of Jehan’s little smile was deduction and how much was just general enjoyment of the process of binding the stem of each carefully-chosen flower and affixing its pearl-ended pin.

Grantaire’s is made of a single succulent, mint-green and radiant with rings of petal-like points; for Enjolras, there’s a golden iris; and against the dark wool of Combeferre’s wedding suit—holy fuck, his _wedding suit_ —it’s impossible to miss the brilliance of a full-on bird of paradise.

The words are brief and as undemanding as it is possible for such words to be. Combeferre takes Grantaire; Grantaire takes Combeferre; the two take hands. There are no rings. They kiss, and the officiant smiles, then discreetly averts her eyes for a moment. All present sign the paper.

“Holy fuck,” Grantaire says as they walk out into the sunshine of the late afternoon on the county building’s broad steps. He’s married. How the fuck did this happen?

Enjolras is beaming. He looks into Grantaire’s eyes in a way he doesn’t usually—a way he hasn’t—just _looks_. “I love you,” he says. It’s not angry or passionate or imploring. It’s just a statement of fact, and because of the way Enjolras is looking at him, it makes its way all the way into Grantaire in a way it maybe hasn’t ever quite done before, and lands there inside him and tries to find a place to lodge. “Congratulations.”

Enjolras shakes Grantaire’s hand, and kisses him on the cheek, then does the same for Combeferre. “See you tomorrow,” he says.

“Wait, what?” Grantaire asks. He’s just assumed that they’d all be going to dinner now, then home—well, to the guys’ home, but now that he’s married to one of the guys, maybe he can just say _home_ out loud, like he says it in his thoughts (and should they have talked through this personal-property business? this is feeling like a significant oversight, but can surely wait until at least tomorrow).

Enjolras is already striding away down the long block.

“He says we’re never alone together,” Combeferre says, taking his hand. “Let’s go home.”

*

At home, there’s fancy little foods laid out on the kitchen bar—dishes of olives and hummus, savory pastries, grilled vegetables—and sparkling wine in the fridge. Combeferre pours them each a glass.

“To you,” he says, raising his glass toward Grantaire. “And to us.”

“To you,” Grantaire repeats back. “My...” He tries it out: “... _husband_?”

“I suppose,” Combeferre says. “I’ve never much cared for that word. It’s rather blatantly patriarchal, in its conflation of the duties of a married man with those of a farmer or manager tending to his holdings. I have little wish to husband you.”

“But do you really?” Grantaire asks, thrown off-balance by this. “Isn’t that kind of the whole fucking point of this marriage? That you guys manage me better than I manage myself?”

“For fuck’s sake, Grantaire,” ’Ferre says, and it’s such an unusual thing for ’Ferre to say that Grantaire actually puts his drink down, ready to flee. “The health insurance is just a collateral benefit. The ‘whole fucking point of this marriage’ is that when someone’s essential to you, and you have it in your power to make their life easier, you do it.” He smiles, tilting his glass just a hair toward Grantaire, and takes another sip.

Grantaire picks up his wine again, tosses it back, and leads them to the couch.

He’s going to be brave. This marriage—this entire _this_ of a relationship—is a thing that has happened _to_ him, a lucky snag of the universal fabric that has opted to make his life spectacular beyond the bounds of his own imagination. So, for one goddamn tiny time, he can manage to be brave.

Except he looks at Combeferre, this man he’s married, who is calmly undoing his jacket button to sit beside him on this couch that is maybe now their common property, and gazing at him like marrying Grantaire is quite possibly actually a future he’s always dreamed of, and his throat closes. 

Under that snug jacket, he knows, under the periwinkle necktie that brings out the darker accents in the bird of paradise, under that perfectly white shirt, Combeferre’s body is warm and glowing with life, and right smack in the middle of it, at the sternum, there’s a tattoo that means he means this.

“Combeferre,” he says. ’Ferre looks over at him. His eyes are black and hot. “You’re, fuck. You’re too good. You’re the best person I know. You tend to the sick and fight for the betterment of society, and you’re level-headed and patient, and you had every fucking thing a person could want, and you made room for me anyway.” He sees ’Ferre start to shake his head. “No, you did. You’re gonna say there was always room for me, but that’s just the point. You make room without even knowing you’re doing it. I would’ve died a thousand deaths of joy if someone told me ten years ago I’d be marrying someone like you. I wouldn’t have _believed_ it, because I’m a reasonable human being, but I would’ve died over it anyway. I’m trying to pretend in my brain somehow, just for five minutes, that I just married you, not you and Enj, and it’s still so hard to wrap my brain around it. Like, with you and Enj, I get where I fit in, because you already had so much together, and I kind of fill the gaps. But just you? And just me? I don’t get it. It’s like winning a game I never thought I was playing.”

“Don’t you know we feel the same?” Combeferre breaks in. His voice is particularly low, how it gets when he’s feeling a lot. “At least, I can speak for myself: _I_ do. Enjolras and I—part of why we never dated for so long was that we knew—at least, again, _I_ knew—that it wouldn’t be enough, that we were too much and too little for each other. But then there was a night when I broke down and we decided to just go for it, give it a try. And it was really really good. Not enough.”

Grantaire knows by now that ’Ferre’s not talking about the first time he and Enjolras kissed; he’s heard (with untold glee) about the awkward year-plus of rare, drunk, and impulsive kisses, make-outs, even one urgent, desperate, all-consuming blow job (“ _such_ a misleading precedent,” Enjolras complained, recounting it years later) before they decided to get serious.

“What did it?” he asks now.

“A patient died,” Combeferre says. He doesn’t shy away from naming death, which makes sense considering his line of work, but it’s always a jolt to Grantaire to remember how horrifically often Combeferre must confront it. “I’d just gotten off a 24-hour shift and I had another in the morning, and I didn’t know how I was going to face it. I went to see Enjolras, just to talk, I thought, but he saw my face and he opened his arms and just held me. I already knew, before that, I loved him. With him holding me, though, that’s when I realized, _this is how I get through tomorrow._ That’s when I knew I had to spend my life with him. Because even if we couldn’t be everything for each other, I needed him.” He reaches for Grantaire’s left hand and coasts his thumb across the back. “Needed this.”

Grantaire digs deep. He breathes. “I love you, Combeferre,” he says. His voice is a strange, distant, twisted thing, saying these words, like they’ve been extracted and stirred up and reconstituted, but it says them.

Combeferre just sits there for a minute, holding Grantaire’s hand and smiling at him, and Grantaire’s starting to think that maybe this is a set-up and Enjolras is hiding in the draperies, about to spring out in delight at having finally heard this, but no. It’s just that Combeferre wants to sit with it for a minute. The words hang around them like fruit from an overspreading tree, perfuming the air. 

“I’ve never said,” R says, and of course Combeferre already knows this; he would have certainly noticed. What he means though, is different.

“To anyone?” ’Ferre asks. 

Right. He doesn’t have to explain. He married this guy for _reasons_.

Grantaire shakes his head, and ’Ferre nods as if he expected this.

“Enjolras maintains that you didn’t think it would mean anything, coming from you. We’ve been hoping you’d see—well. Saying it, telling me I have your love, that’s the best gift you could possibly give me, Grantaire.” 

“But you _know_ ,” Grantaire demands. “You had to know, both of you.”

“We knew, but we worried.” He laughs. “I worried to myself. Enj worried out loud.”

“You mean he yelled at me.”

Combeferre leans in to whisper in Grantaire’s ear: “And you liked it.” 

“Fuck, ’Ferre.” He turns his head. Their lips meet for just a moment, coasting across each other’s, and Grantaire hopes for the millionth time that his own lazy lips feel even remotely as pleasant—he won’t even aspire to breathtaking—as the taut, firm pressure of ’Ferre’s.

“Every time he ever yelled at you,” ’Ferre murmurs, mouthing his way across Grantaire’s cheek toward the other ear, “It’s ‘cause he didn’t know how to want you.” He tongue licks silent shudders into the side of Grantaire’s neck, where the bird is. He pulls back. “You should probably tell Enjolras soon, too. So he doesn’t—”

Grantaire will never outgrow the pure pleasure of imagining Enjolras caring enough about him to get mad. “He’ll get jealous.”

“An understatement.” Combeferre’s eyes glint, as he thinks, probably, of how hot the sparks of Enjolras’s jealousy fly. 

“I could string him on a _little_.” 

“A little,” Combeferre agrees, and pulls him back in.

He has spent untold time these last few years in the exploratory ardor of these men and their bodies—but tonight, alone with Combeferre, the giant bed just theirs, it feels different. With ’Ferre, things are usually fast and hard and leave him floating in the upper reaches of his own mind. Tonight, ’Ferre keeps slowing them down.

They’re only in pants by now, the jackets and ties and shirts draped hastily over a chair in the corner. R’s trying to fumble open the tricky catch of Combeferre’s belt without moving his ass off the bulge of ’Ferre’s cock or his teeth off ’Ferre’s earlobe, when ’Ferre says, “Those photos over there, by Eponine...” 

“Yeah,” R pants, sitting back a little. At least this latest of many side conversations would allow him the space to effectively remove these damn clothes. He looks where Combeferre’s looking.

He had been surprised, the first time he made it as far as the guys’ bedroom, to see those on the wall—silver-gray prints from a rally: ’Ferre and Courf arm-in-arm; Cosette with a placard, screaming, her face stretched into lines of pure feeling; R leaning on some concrete thing at the edge of the crowd and gazing rapturous, against his will, at something outside of the frame, his face divided, because of the angle, into planes of shadow and bright. He knew instantly what he was watching, cigarette burning forgotten in his pinched fingers at the bottom of the shot—Enjolras, at the front of everyone, banging on the impenetrable doors of City Hall, demanding, on behalf of himself and the thousands behind him, an audience. Which, in fact, they ended up getting.

It is very difficult to say no to Enjolras.

Point, though: There was a photo of him, here, in their bedroom, where they had _sex_.

“I got those for Enjolras. Maybe he hadn’t picked up on how he threw himself at me every time you two got into it at the ABC, but I had. I thought he’d like to look at you.”

“And Cosette and Courf?”

“I didn’t want to be too obvious, just buying the one. And I think we look pretty nice there. The composition in the photo of Cosette consistently—”

“What’d Enjolras say?”

“I took him by surprise—snuck the one of you by his side of the bed, and he didn’t see it until we were, well, involved in bedroom activities, and he—he didn’t say anything. Just went silent, like he was trying to hold in something uncontainable. And, I was lying behind him, inside him, I told him, ‘Say his name. It’s okay.’”

Grantaire is suddenly aware, again, that he is fully hard. 

“He groaned it. I told him, in his ear, ‘He wants you, too. You can have him.’ And then it was just yelling.” Combeferre grins cheekily. “After, we had a talk.”

“And decided to corner me in a public bathroom?” Grantaire has loosened everyone’s belts, and is kissing ’Ferre’s jaw.

“It was hard to know what you’d go for,” ’Ferre says. “It’s always hard, with you. We figured asking you to dinner would be make you self-conscious, whereas at minimum you would understand that we had sexual desire for you.”

“At minimum?” Grantaire laughs at the absurdity of this.

“You were always having sex with people. Enjolras was pretty perturbed by it.”

Grantaire does remember some choice comments Enj made, back then, about his indiscreet and frequent flings. Less _indiscreet_ , he recalls now, than _insignificant_ ; even now, it’s hard to believe that anyone but him noticed, or gave a shit. Honestly, often the best part of those miscellaneous fucks was the possibility that when he glanced back on the way out of the bar with whoever it was that time, he might catch Enjolras watching through narrowed eyes, and know that he cared—even just to be angry—how Grantaire chose to use his human body. 

“Will he be perturbed that I’m having sex with _you_?”

“I think he’ll be more troubled if you don’t.”

“Then what the fuck are you waiting for?” Grantaire demands.

“Grantaire,” Combeferre laughs, shucking off his pants, “I’m not _waiting_. I’m just not in a hurry.”

He proceeds to fuck Grantaire so slowly that Grantaire wants to cry from frustration at the subtle inching-in of that magnificent cock into his ass, how it slides, inexorably slow, as it enters him; except that he’s looking into ’Ferre’s eyes the whole time, through just paltry scraps of crystalline space, and he is ’Ferre’s and ’Ferre is his and every point of contact sings with it. 

“Combeferre,” he gasps as orgasm approaches. “Combeferre. I will spouse you to the end of my days.”

*

While they were fucking, a text came in from Courfeyrac: when they look, after, it turns out to be a photo of Enjolras, obviously shitfaced, hair a wild, majestic, twisted mane, standing on a bar-top, bloviating to an audience of goggle-eyed drunks.

“Your boy,” says the caption. 

“Everything good?” ’Ferre texts back.

“Splendid,” writes Courf. “Boutta go sleep this off. You guys keep going.”

— 

The next morning, when he finally wakes up, it’s warm and bright in the bedroom and there’s music playing from the kitchen. There, he finds Enjolras and Combeferre drinking coffee together.

“Morning,” Grantaire grunts, heading for the coffee pot, but Enjolras has anticipated him and jams a full, sustaining mug into his hand, and wraps himself all the way around Grantaire in a hug. Grantaire drinks deeply, then lets out an enormous, cat-stretching-in-the-sun type of yawn.

“I brought pastries, too,” Enjolras says, kissing him on the stretched stubbly cheek while he yawns. 

“I think we should go public,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras’s hand, which has already worked its way onto the warm skin under Grantaire’s waistband, plunges lower to take hold of his wakeful cock.

It wakes further.

“How public?” Enjolras demands, squeezing. Grantaire moans. “Our friends know. Who else?”

“The marriage certificate is a matter of public record,” notes Combeferre.

“But. My _legal_ name,” points out Grantaire, who is not doing terrific with the words just now, what with the complex topic and the hot cup and the fingertips dancing on his balls.

“Surely some journalist is up to the challenge of cracking that code.”

“What I mean is—. Ohhhh.” Grantaire just gives up for a minute, letting Enjolras tease him till he’s hard and swaying (not thrusting; the _coffee_ ) into the fist around his cock.

Enjolras’s hand relaxes around him. “You were saying?”

“You asshole.”

“Fuck you.” Enjolras’s eyes sparkle as he says it.

God, this guy. 

“Fuck _you_. I want it on my terms. Don’t want some blog to dig up that I’m married to ’Ferre and then have to squelch my way out of the closets one door at a time. I want them to know about you, too.”

Enjolras drops down to tug away Grantaire’s sleep pants, and if it was difficult to not thrust into his hand a minute ago, it’s pretty much impossible not to rocket everything he’s got into that tight mouth. His technique is straightforward and encompassing and never not acceptable.

“It won’t matter much for me,” Combeferre says, watching and smiling. “Medical workers have seen everything. A couple of my colleagues are openly poly. It’ll be less of a shock for them than when I started seeing Enj in the first place. But what about for you, Enjolras?”

Enjolras, sucking hard, makes some grunting sounds that seem to indicate a negative. 

“His boss makes them take a week off each year for Spiritual Integrity,” Grantaire interprets, because he has visited Enjolras’s work, and it is ridiculous. “And also has baskets of condoms in the bathroom. No one there gives a fuck.”

“So it’s really just down to you, R. What do you want the world to know about you?”

Enjolras pulls off, looking soft-mouthed and bright-eyed and very put out. “Why would everyone be so thrilled to think he’s fucking everyone who looks his direction, but not that he’s in a committed three-person relationship?”

“Exclusive mating is still an ideal our society holds dear,” Combeferre contributes. “Evidence of its limitations has done little to dampen our collective zeal.”

“They want to believe I’m looking for my soulmate.”

“And getting heavily fucked while you do it.” Fingers twist around his cock, sliding up and down through the wetness.

Yeah, Grantaire nods. “Looking for my soulmate between people’s legs.”

“That’s where?” ’Ferre asks glibly. “Enj, did you know?”

Still on his knees, Enjolras pushes Grantaire backward into the wall, so that he can at least, thank every holy thing, stow this damn coffee cup down on a ledge and _lean_. “Wanna help?” he asks, looking over his shoulder at Combeferre.

And then they’re both below him, below Grantaire, who can barely support his own quivering body under this onslaught of attentions, their mouths meeting around the thick slipping mass of his cock, tongues sliding along the sides as his hips propel him forward and back.

’Ferre’s trying hard, his tongue working almost as diligently as Enjolras’s, and Grantaire is just here in a lovely normal kitchen with windows that, blessed be, open only onto leafy trees, fucking his boyfriends’ mouths, and he can’t hold it in. “God, please, god. Fuck. You guys.” His hands are in their hair now—well, in Enjolras’s hair, tangling tight in the curls, and curving around the smooth arc of Combeferre’s gorgeous skull—holding them together, holding them, and it’s only now that he realizes that their spare hands are busy, too, getting themselves off under him, getting themselves off on _what they’re doing to him_. “Enj. ’Ferre. I. I love you.” 

Enjolras moans around his cock, moans and shifts and grabs at him so that R’s fucking into his mouth again for real, and then ’Ferre, too, is making a strangely rumbling sort of noise, descending to lap urgently at his balls, and their mouths are the best, warmest, least likely places Grantaire might have ever imagined he’d find himself, but here he is, giving Enjolras’s whimpering mouth everything he’s got, until the everything’s gone out of him and he slumps back around the wall, empty and fulfilled.

Before him, Enj and ’Ferre sit back on their heels, still catching their breath. Disheveled and perfect, they look up at him.

“What’s the verdict?” R asks. His cock is still hanging out, losing fullness. So are theirs. “Am I your one and only?”

Enjolras looks at Combeferre, then at Grantaire. “We chose right.”

“And we have no compunction about informing anyone you should see fit to tell.”

“Then—” 

Enjolras cuts him off. “But you’re just building a name for yourself. You’re getting famous.”

“You think people give a shit who artists bang?”

Combeferre, on the floor, looks pensive. “It could interfere with your publicity.”

“Do you care if I never get bigger than this?”

“Of course not. But what of your aspirations?”

“Meh. I want the big bucks, but I don’t need people to like me. That approval-seeking bullshit’s how people rot their insides.” He reaches a hand out to each of his partners, lovers, _spouses_. “I think we all know what _I_ want.”

“Then,” says Enjolras, grabbing hold, “let’s do this.”

**Author's Note:**

> It seems likely, now that I have pried this story back open, that there will someday be more. Feel free to [subscribe to the series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/999843) if you want to get an alert months or years from now when I finally write it.


End file.
